2020 – Page 11 – Mouse Print*

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Get an Extra Year Warranty on Refurbished Items Free

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020 by Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

One of the great bargains that shoppers can get is when an electronic item is refurbished. Sometimes these are even brand new products but sold in plain brown boxes so as not to compete with the manufacturer’s own regular line.

The downside of buying a refurb is that it typically only comes with a 90-day warranty. And to add insult to injury, most credit cards with an extended warranty benefit (that doubles the manufacturer’s warranty) excludes refurbished items. Grrrr.

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However, while perusing the fine print of the recently published credit card benefits booklet for the Chase Freedom Visa card, MrConsumer discovered a terrific change. While the standard language excluding used and pre-owned items is still there, Chase made an exception and is now covering refurbished goods that come with a warranty.

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And as an added bonus, unlike most policies that merely double the manufacturer’s warranty, which on a 90-day warranty only would add three months, the one from Chase Freedom adds a full year extra.

Thanks, Chase.

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Before You Sign Up for That $15 T-Mobile Plan…

May 18, 2020 by Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

As part of its agreement to merge with Sprint, T-Mobile promised to offer a really cheap basic plan. And they have launched it earlier than planned to help people who are watching every penny in these tough times.

While this is one of the cheapest plans ever offered directly from a major carrier and the extra data provided each year is a valuable extra benefit, buried in the fine print is a nasty surprise.

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Fine print shown ACTUAL SIZE

This is just part of a huge block of virtually unreadable fine print that appears on the offer page.

The key part says that after you use up your two gigabyte monthly data allowance, your data completely shuts off rather than just decreases to a crawl as almost every other plan does these days. (You can buy extra data at an unspecified premium price, however.)

Note that Tello offers a 2-gb plan with unlimited calls/texts for just $14 and it slows speeds if you run out of high-speed data. You must use a Sprint-compatible phone for that service. ++

++ Consumer World will earn a small commission if you sign up for Tello using referral code P3F3SR3J .

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Bored at Home? Reading “Terms of Service” Agreements Will Fill Your Days!

May 11, 2020 by Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

Most of us usually don’t have the time or patience to read a website’s “terms of service” (TOS) agreement. We simply click “agree” if we are even asked in the first place to consent to their various conditions. But now that we are all cooped up at home, we actually have the time to review those contracts. I know, you’d rather clean your kitchen counter one more time and wipe down all your groceries instead.

Some of those policies are ridiculously long. The Microsoft TOS agreement, for example, runs over 15,000 words — just slightly shorter than Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

So, to help you visualize what a daunting task it would actually be to read the TOS agreements from 14 of America’s leading companies and websites, the Visual Capitalist created this infographic. It depicts the comparative length of each company’s policy and how long each would take to read.

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Scroll down the chart OR Click to enlarge.

These companies rely on the laziness of their customers who rarely take time to read the fine print of what they are agreeing to. And most times, the terms benefit the company more than you.